“The Germany-based, non-profit research and policy institute European Stability Initiative (ESI) has said the European Union’s current visa policy regarding Turkey is illegal and in violation of its own legal obligations, not to mention unsustainable.

In a newsletter the ESI posted on its website titled “The time is now: Changing EU visa policy on Turkey,” it says Turkey is the only EU candidate country without a visa-free travel agreement with the EU. Moldova and Ukraine, which have yet to receive any promise of membership, are participating in an EU visa liberalization process. There are even discussions about visa-free travel for Russians, the institute says. Mexicans, Brazilians, Guatemalans, Israelis and Malaysians can all travel to the EU without a visa, while citizens of Turkey — which applied for EU membership in 1959 and has been negotiating with the bloc since 2005 — still cannot travel to EU member states without a visa.

According to the ESI, there are three major problems with the EU’s current policy. First, it violates the EU’s own legal commitments. Second, it undermines the bloc’s vital security interests. Finally, it is based on mistaken assumptions.

In 1963, Turkey signed an Association Agreement with the EU. A protocol to this agreement states that both sides “shall refrain from introducing between themselves any new restrictions on the freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services.”

The ESI points out a court decision in the case of a Turkish national arrested by the German federal police at the country’s border with the Czech Republic in August 2009. Even though the man had entered Germany without a visa in order to buy a car, a local court in the city of Cham ordered his immediate release, noting that as a Turkish national he could “rely on visa-free travel according to the so-called standstill clause,” which refers to the aforementioned protocol.

The ESI cites in the newsletter a stream of European court rulings which have confirmed Turks’ right to travel to a number of EU member states in the past few years. In February 2009, the European Court of Justice ruled that Turkish truck drivers Mehmet Soysal and İbrahim Şavatlı, as service providers, did not need a visa to enter Germany. In November 2010, a Turkish tourist entering Germany from Poland without a visa was arrested for illegal immigration and sent to prison. Based on these rulings, the institute has come up with the conclusion that the current Schengen visa requirement, and the EU regulations on which it is based, are illegal and that EU working groups often ignore that when it comes to the visa issue Turkish citizens already have legal rights inside the EU.”

This blog is about the relations between Turkey and the EU. I explain how much some notorious French TV channels and other media are biased regarding Turkey. This blog is an antidote for the perpetual anti-Turkey brainwashing of numerous dark circles with